REVIEWSStephen
Infinite Vacation #4
Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Christian Ward
Publisher: Image Comics
A spell-binding experiment in sequential storytelling unlike anything you’ve ever seen before! As Mark tries to evade capture by the makers of The Infinite Vacation, a high-speed chase through universes ensues. Every panel is a different world, as infinity explodes on the page – trust us, you’ve never seen one like this. Don’t miss the groundbreaking issue everyone will be talking about.

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RODRIGO
Witchblade #154
cover A Christopher
“UNBALANCED PIECES”, Part Four
Sara Pezzini only wants to repay Cain Jorgonson by rescuing him, but the cult of the mysterious Fleshblade stands firmly in her way. The new creative team of TIM SEELEY (HACK/SLASH) and DIEGO BERNARD (The Man With No Name) continue their genre bending run on WITCHBLADE!

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Matthew
KIRBY: GENESIS – SILVER STAR #4
Plot by ALEX ROSS, JAI NITZ
Script by JAI NITZ
Art by JOHNNY DESJARDINS
What if the Silver Star had never existed? Tracy Coleman wakes up from her decades-long slumber to find a utopian world full of Kirby superheroes, but Silver Star isn’t among them. Tracy is the only person who remembers the most powerful superhero ever, and she is hunted for her forbidden knowledge. Can Tracy survive when everyone in the superpowered world is out to get her? And what happens when she finally finds the powerless Morgan Miller? Alternate universe action in the Kirby tradition, brought to you by Jai Nitz and Johnny D!

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BRUCE
EXILE ON THE PLANET OF THE APES #1 Written by Corinna Sara Bechko, Gabriel Hardman Art by Marc Laming Publisher: BOOM! Studios
From the team that brought you BETRAYAL OF THE PLANET OF THE APES comes an all new Apes saga! Gabriel Hardman (HULK, AGENTS OF ATLAS) and Corinna Bechko (HEATHENTOWN, FEAR ITSELF: THE HOME FRONT) team up with red hot artist Marc Laming (AMERICAN CENTURY, THE RINSE) to take the fan-favorite franchise to all new heights in this can’t-miss mini-series. With ape society gripped in uncertainty, Doctor Zaius must find a way to unite the warring factions before they rip the city apart. It’s up to one lowly chimp to seek out the famed, disgraced General Aleron deep in the heart of the Forbidden Zone, with a secret that might help — or destroy!

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Major Spoilers Poll of the Week
Marvel is asking fans to choose sides in the coming Avengers vs. X-Men battle royal.

Discussion:
Mage: The Hero Discovered
Writer: Matt Wagner
Artist: Matt Wagner
The Hero Discovered follows Kevin Matchstick, an alienated young man who meets a wizard called Mirth and discovers that he, among other things, possesses both a magic baseball bat and superhuman abilities. In the course of the comic, he defeats the nefarious plans of a being called the Umbra Sprite. He ultimately discovers that Mirth is Merlin, the baseball bat is Excalibur, and he is, in some ambiguous way, King Arthur. All the chapter titles are lines from Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

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Warning: Pregnant women, the elderly, and children under 10 should avoid prolonged exposure to the Robot Overlord. Robot Overlord may suddenly accelerate to dangerous speeds. The Robot Overlord contains a liquid core, which if exposed due to rupture, should not be touched, inhaled, or looked at. If Robot Overlord begins to smoke, get away immediately. Seek shelter and cover head. Do not taunt the Robot Overlord.

My brothers and I were into TMNT before the cartoon… so much so we had pet turtles named after them. I think the appeal for us was that anthropomorphized animals gave kids a backdoor to extreme martial content parents would probably have screened otherwise. It also didn’t hurt that the first scifi arc featured my most favorite dinosaur of all time… I swear we ground yellow number 2 pencils to nubs copying those Triceradons over and over. Then we suddenly stopped caring. I enjoyed the 2003 cartoon and Forever, but everything else is a shrug. I hope this new film does well if only to push the viability of projects like these- action, scifi, inhuman cgi casts, etc.

Infinite Vacation lost me last issue with the excessive darkness (rape and mutilation)… plus, I felt like the really interesting “What if?” spun out of being something reflective (what if you took this turn or that) into ungrounded fantasy (too radically divorced from the initial premise, if alternate Marks can be that different, the relevance of even being a Mark is lost and meaningless). I still picked up the most recent issue, but I imagine it’ll sit on the stack for a while before I get to it.

AvX… I’m ambivalent. It’s not who wins so much as how they win. So long as the story is entertaining, either team winning is OK with me. I guess in principle, the X-Men represent an entire species so a W is more important to them, but that doesn’t really make me root for them any more than the Avengers.

Wow. Surprised no one mentioned it. Matthew, you were right the second time.

Splinter in the original comic book (keep in mind I’m working from a very faulty memory here, and not Wikipedia) was the name of a human being who had a pet rat. That pet rat was abnormally intelligent and dextrous, as it would copy the martial arts moves of the master. I remember this, because I remember the drawing of the furry rat (which looked more like some random furry creature with hands) in a martial arts stance inside of his cage.

When the master was killed by the man who becomes Shredder, the pet rat escapes and eventually becomes Master Splinter–master of the turtles.

This origin was changed in the first cartoon to have Splinter initially be human.